1. Field of the Invention
Various embodiments of the present invention relate to equipment control, and more specifically, to a method and apparatus for controlling a wind turbine.
2. Description of Related Art
As wind energy is clean, pollution-free and renewable, wind power plays an increasingly important role in the worldwide construction of new energy. Wind turbines are the core equipment of wind power; wind turbines are usually located in windy plains or coastal areas with bad weather conditions, so they are vulnerable to adverse factors such as the severe cold, sandstorms and moisture and are likely to crash during daily operation.
A wind turbine is a kind of large equipment for transforming wind energy into electric energy and typically includes a large number of components such as a controller, a sensor, a yaw system, a pitch system, a generator and a mechanical drive, wherein the controller and the sensor are most fault-prone. In an existing wind farm, due to the difference of the geographical location of each wind turbine and factors like surrounding topography, the controller of each wind turbine has to adjust actions (e.g., invoking a mechanical drive device to orient the wind turbine's head towards current wind direction, etc.) of each component in the wind turbine according to specific parameters of its location such as wind force, wind direction and current yaw angle of the wind turbine.
However, when the controller and/or sensor of a specific wind turbine in a wind farm has faults or crashes, in order to prevent the wind turbine from further damage, the faulted wind turbine must be shut down temporarily and wait to be maintained by technicians on the site. The shutdown of the wind turbine reduces the energy production and further produces fluctuations of power outputted to the backbone grid, and on the other hand, causes wear on the wind turbine itself and increases the workload of technicians. As a wind farm usually includes hundreds of wind turbines or more, it becomes a research focus as to how to remove the impact of faults on wind turbines immediately upon the occurrence thereof and enable wind turbines to continue work, according to the existing technical solution.